Henry Fuseli RA (/ˈfjuːzəli, fjuːˈzɛli/ FEW-zə-lee, few-ZEL-ee;[1][2][3] German: Johann Heinrich Füssli [ˈjoːhan ˈhaɪ̯nʁɪç ˈfyːsli]; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain.

After taking orders in 1761, Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate, whose powerful family sought revenge.

Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell,[7] and published an English edition of Lavater's work on physiognomy.

[4] The early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose portrait he had painted, planned a trip with him to Paris, and pursued him determinedly, but communication between the two was stopped by Rawlins.

[4][further explanation needed] Antonio Canova, when on his visit to England, was much taken with Fuseli's works, and on returning to Rome in 1817 caused him to be elected a member of the first class in the Accademia di San Luca.

In this theory he was confirmed by the study of Michelangelo's works and the marble statues of the Monte Cavallo,[4][10] which, when at Rome, he liked to contemplate in the evening, relieved against a murky sky or illuminated by lightning.

Describing his style, William Michael Rossetti in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition said that:His figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view which they follow with intensity.

The grotesque humour of his fairy scenes, especially those taken from A Midsummer-Night's Dream, is in its way not less remarkable than the poetic power of his more ambitious works.

He often used his pigments in the form of a dry powder, which he hastily combined on the end of his brush with oil, or turpentine, or gold size, regardless of the quantity, and depending on accident for the general effect.

[4] Themes seen in The Nightmare such as horror, dark magic and sexuality, were echoed in his 1796 painting, Night-Hag visiting the Lapland Witches.

In his drawings, as in his paintings, his methods included deliberately exaggerating the proportions of the human body and throwing his figures into contorted attitudes.

[14] William Blake, who was 16 years his junior, recognized a debt to him, and for a time many English artists copied his mannerisms.

[15][16] After a life of uninterrupted good health,[4] he died on 17 April 1825, at the house of the Countess of Guildford on Putney Hill,[17] aged 84, and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.